


and i'm lonely (there i said it)

by ghostbandaids



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depressed TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, IRL Fic, Mental Health Issues, PLEASE CHECK THE TAGS, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Therapy, Tommy needs a hug, Unbeta-ed, Unreliable Narrator, and he gets one, sbi, this is half vent and half therapy for me, tommyinnit has adhd, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28992570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbandaids/pseuds/ghostbandaids
Summary: He walked through the empty, sterile hallway and sat down at his computer, staring at the camera that would soon show his face to hundreds of thousands of people.Don’t mess this up, he thought. Like you mess up everything else.Tommy never asks for help, so it takes a while for people to realize that he needs it.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 72
Kudos: 1497
Collections: Completed stories I've read, MCYT Fic Rec





	and i'm lonely (there i said it)

**Author's Note:**

> if ccs are uncomfortable with work like this, it will be removed. title from _la jolla_ , wilbur soot
> 
>  **CONTENT WARNINGS:** this fic contains self-harm, self-hatred, depression, and derealization. if any of this content could be triggering for you, please don't read it. take care of yourself <3 you are loved
> 
> the happy ending tag is true, but it doesn't make the first part of the fic easier to read

Sometimes, the silence was so loud that it reverberated and buzzed in his ears, a staticy nothingness. Tommy hated quiet — it was why he always tried to fill rooms with his voice, streams with his humor. If he was loud enough, he could keep the emptiness away. 

His parents were always gone on business trips, leaving suddenly and returning sporadically, so there was no one in the house to bang pots around or watch TV when he wasn’t in the room. No one to talk to or to wake him up in the morning. 

It wasn’t really the silence itself; rather, he hated how it meant being alone. When he wasn’t streaming or calling someone, the walls of the empty house seemed to lean towards him — his own, thin form not enough to fill the gaps where he wished his parents were. He yearned to hear someone’s voice from another room rather than from a tinny phone speaker, distorted by the feedback of distance. 

_It’s not a big deal_ , he told himself. Lots of people lived alone and most of them didn’t have the network of friends that he did. He was fine. 

And if the house was silent, he would just have to make up for it.

He tossed his backpack to the wall and fell onto his bed, burying his face in the blankets.

School had been shitty. His teacher had yelled at him for not focusing during a lecture — he didn’t get how everyone else sat still for so long. She’d taken his constant shifting as a sign that he wasn’t listening when really, it was the only way he could keep his attention on her and not on the itch for movement in his limbs. 

The reprimand was followed by soft laughter from the desks surrounding him and he forced himself to join in. He was Tommy, the class clown. Tommy, who failed tests and made jokes about the red letters at the top of the papers, though inside he wondered what was wrong with him, why he couldn’t focus or work like everyone else. 

He was Tommy, pretending that the sting in his eyes was allergies and not a wave of embarrassment. 

_Sit still_ , he told himself. _Listen_. But her voice turned into an indecipherable drone as he studied the surface of the desk and he didn’t even realize that she’d set quizzes in front of them until she was at the front of the classroom saying, “Better get started!” 

He’d definitely missed most of the questions, not that his parents would be around to care about the score. 

_Why are you like this?_ he asked himself, knowing there wouldn’t be an answer. _Why can’t you be normal?_

His string of thoughts was interrupted by an alarm, buzzing persistently from inside his backpack. Shit. The noise was jarring and he fumbled around blindly, leafing through notebooks and crumpled pieces of paper until he found his phone and turned it off.

It was time to stream; he hadn’t realized how long he’d been facedown in the blankets.

He dragged himself into the bathroom, rearranging his hair so that it looked normal — not neat, of course, but better than the electric-shock look he’d been sporting before. Pulling on a Tommyinnit shirt, he smiled at the mirror. 

It looked like a grimace.

“Hello chat,” he mumbled. That wouldn’t do. He plastered something more enthusiastic on his face. He was Tommy, and Tommy was happy.

“‘Hello, Chat!” he tried again, forcing a brightness that he didn’t feel into his voice. At least he’d started to get better at acting. 

He walked through the empty, sterile hallway and sat down at his computer, staring at the camera that would soon show his face to hundreds of thousands of people. 

_Don’t this mess up_ , he thought. _Like you mess up everything else._

He let out a breath.

Fastened his smile on like a mask.

Pressed _Stream_. 

“Check for that Twitch Prime,” he yelled. “Don’t know when I’ll be back so turn on your notifications! I’m a busy man these days!”

“Busy doing what?” Wilbur asked.

“Oh, you know. Dates with beautiful women, being a Youtube god.” The first part was a lie. He hoped that people liked his videos, at least.

“Sure, Tommy,” Wilbur laughed. “Say it enough and it’ll come true.”

The chat ran down his monitor, people who spent hours watching him, though he’d never know them. And he tried not to think of how strange it was to be lonely while a quarter of a million people were listening to his voice.

“Goodnight!”

_End Stream._

He said goodbye to Wilbur and slumped to the table, rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. There was no audience to act for, no need to put on a front. He was tired enough to sleep at his desk but he dropped into bed, phone in hand.

Just a quick look at Twitter before he went to sleep, a glance over the most recent tweets with his name to see what people thought. 

Amidst the quotes from the stream, a tweet with a couple hundred likes caught his eyes.

 _God,_ it said. _used to like Tommy but he’s so annoying these days. Can’t believe that someone who just sits and yells at a computer and thinks he’s funny managed to get famous._

The tweet stung but the people who agreed with the sentiment only made it worse. Was he annoying? Everyone always called him loud, but he’d thought it was a good thing. If silence was bad, then noise was good, right?

He tried to ignore the voice in the back of his head that reminded him of the times people had told him to shut up, to stop being such an annoying kid. _Jokes,_ he thought. _I’m sure they were just joking._

_Were they?_

His fingernails dug into his arm, leaving red crescents. 

_You suck at everything but streaming. What if you’re not even good at that?_

He read through every response to the tweet. _Loud,_ one person said. Another: _Immature._ There were people defending him too but that didn’t make it better. 

_“_ Am I annoying?” he asked the ceiling. “I’m funny, yeah? People wouldn’t watch me if they didn’t like my streams.”

He spent the rest of the night watching vods, cringing each time he interrupted someone or laughed loudly at his own jokes when no one else did. He didn’t realize that he was bleeding until a drop of red slipped out from under his nails and onto the sheets. 

_You deserve that,_ he thought cruelly.

It was a way of thinking that spiraled into something damaging over the next couple of days. 

Did he deserve good friends? It didn’t seem like it with how annoying he was — because he was, he realized, aggravating and loud. He didn’t know how they put up with him. 

Did he deserve the subscribers, the exposure? Ever since that night on Twitter, he’d slowly started to doubt himself. What made him different, set him apart from the people who didn’t succeed but worked much harder than he did? Luck?

It was probably luck.

How else could he explain everything life had given him, everything that he’d started to think he didn’t deserve at all.

 _What do you deserve?_ he asked himself in the bathroom, eyes grazing over his father’s shaving razor. He turned off the light and went back to his room, started a conversation with Techno about PVP strategy to distract himself. 

The thought refused to go away, showing up each time he made a mistake or messed up. _What do you deserve?_ it whispered when Wilbur made a joke about how he hadn’t actually wanted to be on Tommy’s stream, when he failed his next math test, when he scrolled through Twitter.

He often found himself standing in the bathroom, holding the razor in contemplation. 

In the end, the decision was almost disappointingly anticlimactic. The day hadn’t been much worse than usual but he’d felt so empty, so numb. Coated by a fog that kept him from feeling anything at all. 

He watched himself raise the razor to his shoulder in the mirror, the movement jerky and strange. It was like he wasn’t really there and in a way, part of him wasn’t; Tommyinnit was stored in a little box, waiting for the next stream. 

Tommy was standing in the bathroom, shivering. But he felt so disconnected. Would it hurt? Maybe not. He just wanted to feel something. 

_This is what you deserve,_ he told himself, pulling the blade lightly across his arm, where he could hide it with his t-shirts. 

His breath hitched as it stung and started to bleed. Nothing about it felt good but there was an odd sort of release. Maybe it wasn’t a good feeling, but it was _something._ A tiny cut: nothing dangerous, nothing noticeable. 

So it was okay, right?

_You deserve it._

A bike ride to the drugstore for bandages and the supermarket for some food — everything tasted the same these days, and he was tempted not to bother but he still struggled to hold on to what he knew should have been easy, routine. 

A phone call with his parents who described skyscrapers in a distant city where the people didn’t speak the same language and the buses didn’t have enough seats for the too-many people that had to take them. They sounded so distant and so far away.

“We miss you!” they yelled in unison.

 _You miss the idea of me,_ he thought.

“I miss you too,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. But maybe he missed the idea of them, the idea of loving parents to dote over whatever he’d become. To fill the house and wipe the dust out of his head.

He wished that they were coming home.

“Maybe in a couple of weeks,” his mother answered when he asked for a return date. “They think this pitch has potential so we’re stuck here for a while.”

“They’ve been giving us caviar and some fancy french thing I don’t even remember the name of,” his father said. “Bet you would love it, bud.”

“Yeah,” he agreed absentmindedly, his thoughts not on the conversation but on the new box of razors in the medicine cabinet, a hallway away.

He heard another voice in his parent’s room and then his mom was saying, “Sorry, honey. We have to go!”

“Bye!” his dad yelled. 

_Click._

“I love you,” he said to the empty line. 

“And I’ve just been— Tommy are you alright?”

“What?” Tommy said, jolted in awareness. 

“You’ve just been quiet, that’s all,” Tubbo said. “And you look tired.”

 _I’m falling apart,_ he thought. _I’m missing but I don’t know if anyone will be able to find me. I don’t know if I want them to._

Thank goodness they weren’t streaming because Tommy was barely able to summon up the cheery personality — he didn’t think of it as his own anymore. 

“Are you saying that I’m not beautiful?” he yelled. “Tubbo, you’ve just insulted me.”

“I’m sorry that I had to be the one to break it to you,” his friend laughed. But there was an edge of something, a tone that implied Tubbo wanted to ask again and was stopping himself.

“I’m alright. College is kinda kicking my ass these days,” Tommy reassured. “But I’m top-o-the-class, no need to worry.”

He tried not to think of the full answering machine in the living room. The messages left by teachers asking, _“Do you know that your son is missing work? Do you know that your son is missing class? Is your son okay?”_

Was he okay?

Maybe.

He was numb and always cold. Time slipped away from him and he was always late to streams and to school and to react. 

“Start the game!” he yelled at Tubbo. Against the keyboard, his fingers felt icy and disconnected, not his own.

He lost over and over again — his hands too shaky and his mind too slow — but he couldn’t bring himself to summon anger. He just congratulated Tubbo and said that he was going to go to sleep. 

“You’re maturing,” Tubbo said.

_I’m disintegrating. I’m a ghost. I bet if you tried, you could see right through me._

_“_ Maybe I am.”

“I feel like you’re coming for my image,” Wilbur said on stream one day.

“What do you mean?” Tommy asked.

“I’m the one with all the crewnecks and hoodies and a fashion sense and you’re the one with your … your Tommyinnit shirts!” Wilbur answered. “But I haven’t seen them for a while. All you wear is hoodies these days.”

“I heard that the ladies like hoodies,” Tommy said, smiling and winking at the camera in a moment that would probably be clipped thousands of times, spread over Twitter and everywhere else.

His laugh sounded forced and fake, grating on his ears.

A shift forward in his chair pulled the fabric of his shirt against his shoulder uncomfortably and he adjusted it without expression. Underneath it, he could feel the bulk of white-gauze bandages and scabs. 

Things that were best covered, kept out of mind. 

Wilbur laughed and said, “Don’t tell me that you’re learning guitar too,” and Tommy whispered theatrically, “You didn’t tell them who wrote your music?” and the moment was over. Maybe the man would ask again later, and Tommy would answer with less bravado, lie about how his house’s heating system wasn’t working well that month. 

For now, he would play the part. He would be what was expected.

He would smile.

He would laugh and be loud — _be annoying_ , he thought.

Tommyinnit was happy. 

Tommy was not Tommyinnit anymore.

He stood in the bathroom, tracing the map on his arms.

A guide to all of the mistakes he’d ever made, a path of what he regretted and his faults and his shortcomings. Some of the lines were red and angry but others had started to heal and close, leaving knotted scars.

Scars that didn’t disappear, even when he refused to acknowledge them.

And he thought for a second that maybe it was bad, what he was doing. That there had to be a better solution than hurting himself.

Just for a second.

But then the voice in his head whispered, _You deserve this, remember?_

 _Yes,_ he answered, _I do._

“Ha!” Techno yelled. “I win! Again.”

Tommy — slumped over his desk and barely processing his screen while he moved his mouse — hummed in a pantomime of sadness. 

“Shoot,” he said. “Guess we know who’s the best now.” Instead of holding it over him, Techno went quiet. 

Maybe he’d gotten bored and left the call. 

Tommy sat up and checked. Nope. Still there, just silent.

“Are you—” Techno said, starting to ask something but trailing off. And then, “Nevermind. Ready to lose to me again?”

“Oh. I think that I might go to sleep,” Tommy said. That was a lie. He didn’t sleep much these days, but he did stare at the ceiling, thinking only of the small water splotches and bumps present there. 

There was another stretch of awkward silence.

“Do you remember a couple months ago when you forced me to play this until you beat me?” Techno asked. “It only took you about four hours.”

“Oh,” he said softly. “Yeah, I remember.”

Back then, Tommyinnit and Tommy had been the same person. His memories, though hazy, were tinted-golden with something like happiness.

 _What happened?_ he asked himself.

 _You learned,_ the voice told him. He wished that he could forget. 

“Well, goodnight,” Techno said. He sounded unsure, voice lifting at the end of his sentence, though it wasn’t a question. 

“Goodnight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Who fucking says that?”

“Me.”

“You’re weird.”

“You’re a child.”

**From Philza:**

_Hey, how're you doing?_

**From Tommyinnit:**

_techno said something didnt he_

**From Philza:**

_Is there something that you think he would have talked about?_

**From Tommyinnit:**

_No_

_I was just tired_

_And he’s an asshole who likes winning_

**From Philza:**

_Okay_

_He does like to win._

**From Tommyinnit:**

_EXACTLY_

_what a bitch_

**From Philza:**

_I just want to let you know that we care about you._

_And that we’re all here to talk if you need us._

**From Tommyinnit:**

_Youre going soft, old man_

_Im fine_

_Just tired_

_Thats all_

He was in another Minecraft Championship that he had to pretend to be excited for. 

Another day of people yelling too loud — him included — and caring too much about pixels on a screen. 

_You used to like these,_ he told himself. _Pull yourself together._

“You ready?” Phil yelled. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

The colors were bright and danced in front of his eyes in a dizzying fashion. He rubbed his face and was about to sigh and slump into his seat when he remembered that his camera was staring straight at him. 

“Let’s do this, chat!”

_Focus._

“Remember, we just have to work as a team.”

_Don’t mess this up._

“Phil’s good at this one. We’ll just try to keep up with him, yeah?”

_Don’t mess up don’t mess up—_

“Shit.”

He’d just exploded his character into a pillar of rock in Terra Swoop, not for the first time or the second. Maybe his third — he wasn’t sure. He usually did pretty well so the mistake made him wince.

“You’re good, man,” Phil said. “Keep going!”

He ignored the blur in his eyes, finished close to last but only cared because it might hurt his team during scoring.

They didn’t win — they weren’t even close. After he went through his ending spiel and closed the stream, he realized that he didn’t remember much of it at all. 

He was so cold.

**From Philza:**

_Nice job today!_

He ignored the message. Even if the man wasn’t lying, Twitter held a different opinion. It was full of, _what was wrong with tommy today?_ and, _geez he’s worse than i remember._

They weren’t alone. He could remember being better, being happy, but he couldn’t remember how he’d done it. It just seemed so out-of-reach. 

He stared at the ceiling for a while, mind comfortably blank. He wasn’t sad that they’d lost or that it’d been his fault because he’d gotten very good at feeling nothing at all. 

_You messed it up for them,_ the voice said.

 _I know,_ he answered.

_You know that they all hate you, right?_

_Probably._

_A burden._ It said. _That’s what you are to them._

_Yeah._

He got up and walked to the bathroom, slightly unsteady, a blanket wrapped around himself like a cape. 

He picked up a razor.

He watched himself raise it in the mirror. 

Was that him? Would he feel it? He always did but was never quite sure. 

It stung against his arm and he realized that he was pushing too hard, pulled his hand away. The cut was deep and red and angry.

The sight made him dizzy and he slid down the wall, trying not to look at it. He’d never gone this far before. _It would be fine_ , he told himself. They always closed (but they’d never bled like this).

He wrapped it in gauze but a stain started to spread. 

Panic raced through him in a wave, not because he was worried for himself but because the towels were red and the floor was red and he didn’t know how he was going to get them clean with only one arm and shaking fingers.

 _It’s fine,_ the voice said. _You’ll be fine._

“Will I?” he asked himself. He was cold and alone and maybe he deserved this, but he wished he could feel something other than pain or emptiness.

He wished that someone would hug him. 

_Burden_

He wished that someone would help him. 

_Burden._

He just wanted to talk to someone but it was late and no one was going to answer a phone call from Tommyinnit. He just wanted to hear someone’s voice. 

_No one wants to hear yours._

With slick fingers, he searched for Wilbur’s contact. His finger hesitated over the _call_ button but Wilbur wasn’t going to answer anyway, so it would be fine.

The dial tone started and he let out a long, shuddery breath. 

It got through three rings before it went silent.

Instead of the cheery voicemail message he was expecting, he heard the shuffling of blankets and a raspy voice. 

“Tommy?”

His heart stopped. He hadn’t been expecting an answer, hadn’t been expecting his call to go through at all. 

“Sorry,” he forced out after a long silence. “Didn’t know that you would answer.”

“It’s alright,” Wilbur said, still sounding half-asleep. “Why’d you call?”

He shifted against the bathroom wall and almost cried out when a sharp pain ran through his shoulder and down his arm. It hadn’t stopped bleeding. He grabbed another handful of gauze. 

It would be fine. He was fine.

He’d been planning to tell a lie but somewhere in the fogginess of his head, the truth found a crack and slipped out. “Just wanted to hear your voice. Go back to sleep, Wilby.”

“You never call me Wilby.” 

Shit. Wilbur sounded awake and Wilbur sounded suspicious. 

“I do now,” he laughed. Or he tried to laugh, but his chest felt weak and didn’t want to cooperate so he settled for a quiet cough. 

“Just hang up, Wilbur,” he whispered. “Please.” He was so close to ruining everything and he didn’t want it to come crumbling down on top of him. 

“Are you okay, Toms?” It was the nickname that did him in. His parents called him Thomas. Everyone else called him Tommy. And no one used that gentle, quiet voice that Wilbur had.

He sniffed. 

“Can you give me a ride somewhere?” He knew that it was a bad plan, but he was still bleeding — not a good sign — and Wilbur didn’t have to stay with him or anything. The hospital would know what to do.

“I— yeah, I can. Are you safe right now?”

“I’m at home.”

“Where do you need to go?”

“I can’t tell you yet.”

The silence was sign enough that Wilbur wanted to demand an explanation.

“I’ll be there in thirty. I love you,” Wilbur said instead.

“I love you too.”

He hung up and forced himself off the ground, throwing the towels into a pile behind the door and putting pressure on his shoulder while he wrapped layers of bandage around it and pulled on a thick hoodie to cover them. 

Using his good arm, he threw a cell phone charger, water bottle, and some granola bars into a backpack. Then he dug around in one of the drawers until he found the credit card his parents had left behind for the grocery store.

His steps were slow but couldn’t stop the jolting pain completely. By the time he got to the entryway, it had probably been a half hour already.

He shivered.

There was a knock on the door. 

“Tommy?”

He pushed himself off the wall, head spinning, to open it. Then Wilbur was in front of him and it had been so long since he’d seen him that all he could do was fall forward into the man’s arms. 

“Toms?” Wilbur said, rubbing his back. He felt soft and warm and safe. “We need to talk about what’s going on.”

“Can we get in the car?” he mumbled into Wilbur’s sweater.

“If you tell me what’s wrong once we’re in there.”

“‘Kay.”

Buckling his seatbelt was difficult with only one arm, but he did it, hoping that Wilbur didn’t notice how long it took. 

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll give you directions.”

He’d been to the hospital a year ago when he was running along the railing of a walkway and fell, his wrist bending at an unnatural angle when the ground rushed up to meet him. Back then, the world had been sharper and he hadn’t meant to hurt himself. But he’d never had great self-preservation. 

“Turn right here.”

The world was silent, houses dark and street lights dim. Even the stars hid behind clouds. 

“Left.”

He didn’t know whether he was going to tell Wilbur the truth, didn’t know if he could or if he wanted to.

“Talk to me, Toms. What’s going on?”

He curled in on himself. 

“Keep going straight through the traffic light.”

“I’ll stop this car.” Wilbur said, his jaw tense and eyes on the road. 

“I—” Tommy started. “I think that there’s something wrong with me Wil.”

“What do you mean, Toms?”

He stared out the window, saw the bright strips of hospital lights over the parking lot and outpatient buildings. 

“Turn left and go through the roundabout.”

Wilbur did. 

“I want you to know that I care about you,” Wilbur said softly. “I really do. And I don’t know what’s going on but nothing will change that.”

“Do people really mean that when they say it?” Tommy asks. “It seems like such an easy phrase to give away.”

“I mean it,” Wilbur answers. “You’re like a little brother to me.”

“Annoying, bothersome, loud—”

“Family.”

Tommy didn’t know how to reply to that. His brain tried to insist that Wilbur was lying but he sounded so genuine. 

“Turn into this lot.”

“Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

“This is the hospital.”

“I know.”

“Why are we at the hospital?”

“You’re dropping me off.” Tommy answered. “And then you can go back home.”

Wilbur opened his mouth to say something when his eyes drifted down to Tommy’s shoulder. 

Oh. 

There was a red blotch there. 

“Tommy,” he whispered. “What did you do?”

Tommy grabbed his backpack by the straps and pulled it over his good shoulder, opened the door. He started to walk towards the A&E, his steps slow and measured. 

It wasn’t the fact that Wilbur caught up with him that was surprising. It was that the man followed him at all. 

He felt his backpack tugged off his shoulder and he kept walking. 

“I’m not leaving.”

“Okay,” Tommy said.

He kept walking. His head pounded in time with his shoulder, which was starting to really fucking hurt. 

Then they were inside and the light was blinding, the smell of disinfectant filling his nose.

“Sign your name,” said Wilbur, handing him a form that must have taken a couple minutes to fill out, though he didn’t remember sitting for that long. 

They were whisked into a room where a nurse asked him to take off his hoodie. 

“I can leave,” Wilbur said. 

“Stay,” he said quietly. 

He heard the man take a sharp breath when the bandages were peeled away but he refused to look at Wilbur or the cut. Maybe it wasn’t real if he didn’t look. 

“It’s … deeper than I expected,” the nurse said. “An accident?

“Yes,” he said, and everyone in the room knew he was lying.

“I’ll get a doctor in here. You need stitches.”

“Okay.”

The door closed behind her and only then did he notice that Wilbur was crying, wiping his eyes as quietly as possible. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. 

Wilbur choked. 

“I had no idea,” he said. “I had no fucking idea, and I should have been there for you.”

“If you didn’t know about it, I must have been doing a good job,” Tommy said, allowing himself a small smile. “You weren’t supposed to find out. Nobody was.”

“I love you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d be fine, Wil. No one ever needs me.”

“That’s not true,” Wilbur said, more of a half-sob. He walked over to Tommy and gave him a careful hug, like he was worried Tommy was going to break if pressed too hard. “That’s not true,” he repeated.

 _He’s lying,_ the voice said. 

_Shut up,_ Tommy replied. 

Then the doctor was back and he was being led into a room with an operating table.

“It’s going to be okay,” Wilbur said while he held Tommy’s hand, maybe reassuring himself. 

“Count down from ten,” the doctor said, fixing a plastic mask over his mouth.

He started but didn’t get much farther than six before he woke up again. 

“I thought that they were going to stitch it up,” he said, throat scratchy, voice panicked. “It didn’t work. _It didn’t work_. I’m still awake.” 

“Hey, buddy,” someone said. “It’s finished, you’re alright."

When he reached up to feel his shoulder, his movements were slow and syrupy. He felt bandages wrapped around his arm that hadn’t been there when he closed his eyes. 

“Oh,” he said. 

“Go back to sleep,” said the man, voice familiar and only slightly different in person.

“Phil?”

“Yeah.” He sounded as tired as Tommy felt. 

“Why are you here?” 

“Wilbur called me.”

“Oh. Okay,”

The world spun so he closed his eyes again, fell back asleep. He didn’t dream or if he did, he didn’t remember. 

It was a conversation that woke him up again, the fogginess in his head still there but less present. He could feel the warm touch of sunlight against his face. 

“We have several outpatient programs and a great children’s psychologist on-site,” someone said.

“He’s just a kid!” That was Wilbur. 

“Yes, Wil,” Phil said softly. “He’s just a kid and he needs people to help him. We’ll take those forms, please.”

 _Just a fucking kid,_ he thought. 

They led him out to the car and one of them must have buckled him into the backseat because then they were moving, his arm resting in a hospital-blanket-nest so that the starts and stops of traffic wouldn’t jostle it.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he mumbled when they turned right instead of left. 

“We’re going to stay at Wil’s for a little bit,” Phil answered. 

“I’ll be fine if you drop me off at my house.”

“We have some stuff to figure out, Toms. And we don’t want you to be alone.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”

“You’re not fine,” Wilbur said. He’d been quiet and his face was shadowed, illuminating streetlights only accentuating its hollowness. 

“Whatever,” Tommy said. He closed his eyes, didn’t want to see how worried they looked because of him.

So he stayed in Wilbur’s guest room, white and clean, almost familiar with how similar it was to his own. 

When they brought him plates of food, he ate. When they asked if he wanted to wash his face (no showers, he couldn’t get the cut’s dressing wet), he did it — not because he cared but because they did.

He slept when his exhausted body gave out and spent his free time learning what Wilbur’s ceiling looked like — new, smooth, no cracks or interesting water stains. 

He ignored the fact that the knife block was empty and there was stubble on Wilbur’s chin. 

He asked if they’d talked to his parents and Phil said that he had, sharing a glance with Wilbur. 

“What?” he asked. “Did you tell them what happened? Were they mad?”

“They— I don’t know, Toms. They said that they’re really busy right now.”

“They’re always too busy,” he said, frowning. “What did they say about me?”

“They're worried, and they’re going to come back as soon as they can,” Wilbur answered, voice tilting away from his usual timbre and into the one Tommy had heard too many times on streams when the man was trying to keep a secret.

“You’re a shit liar."

“I don’t share their beliefs and I’d rather not repeat them.”

“I don’t fucking care about your _beliefs,_ I just want to know what my parents said.”

“Wil,” Phil said warningly.

“He deserves to know,” Wilbur said. 

“He deserves better,” Phil replied.

“You really think that I’m going to be surprised? They haven’t seen me for months! I’ve done my own grocery shopping for years!” Tommy yelled. “You think I haven’t noticed that they don’t care?”

Wilbur and Phil were shocked into silence, eyes wide. He’d never really talked about his parents, only in the offhand mentioning that it was okay if he yelled because they were never home. And he hadn’t raised his voice once since the night that Wilbur picked him up.

“Tell me what they said, I don’t give a fuck.”

“They said that all teenagers go through stuff like this and that you probably just wanted attention. They said they’d pay us to stay with you and—” Wilbur paused before continuing, his voice disgusted, “— deal with it.”

Tommy flinched but told himself that it was better to know the truth. It wasn’t too surprising of them — always leaving, never wanting to spend time with him or talk to him to make sure he was okay.

“We didn’t want to tell you because what you’re going through is real,” Phil said. “The same as a broken bone that needs time to heal. It’s not something that should be passed off like a chore that they don’t want to do.”

“I hope you took the money,” he muttered before turning and walking up the stairs to his bedroom, closing the door with a sharp click — there was no lock, of course there was no lock. 

His fingers itched for something metallic, something sharp. But Wilbur had emptied the whole house and he knew that they were probably waiting outside his room so there was no point. He stared at the ceiling instead, eyes following a particularly energetic fly.

For attention, his parents had said. Had he wanted attention? Not really. He’d just wanted to feel something. 

In the end, he’d felt too much, none of it good.

They drove him to an appointment with his new therapist and when she asked, “How do you feel?” he told her that he didn’t feel much of anything at all. Which was true. At least, he tried not to. 

Wilbur was sad, Phil was stoic, Tommy was empty.

There were some things that were better, if only by a little bit. 

He liked it when Wilbur played the guitar, especially if the man was somewhere else in the huge house, his voice leaking through the halls and under Tommy’s door. It was because Wilbur’s singing wasn’t a conversation that he had to take part in, wasn’t a question that he didn’t know how to answer.

He could just listen.

He liked it when he was laying in bed and in the kitchen downstairs, he could hear Wilbur and Phil talking. Most days, he couldn’t even make out what they were saying but it didn’t really matter.

Because they were there.

The voice said, _You’re a burden, you can’t even take care of yourself._ Sometimes, he agreed with it but on mornings where Wilbur made his favorite meals or Phil convinced him to get out of bed, he hummed over it and tried to tell himself that they wouldn’t have stayed this long if they didn’t care.

It wasn’t like he’d asked them to. And he knew they were never going to take payment for it. 

He liked how when he went to see his therapist, there were things to hold and twist and fidget with on her desk.

He liked her too, even if she did ask stupid questions about how he was feeling. She listened and took lots of notes and he thought it was funny the only woman he’d spent time with in the last few months was a middle-aged psychiatrist named Thyme. 

At first, he refused to talk to her about the things he was seeing her for. He could waste hours of time talking about his perfect friends and everything that he’d ended up with, everything that he didn’t deserve. Then he’d look up and see that she was taking notes and realize that maybe what he’d strayed into topics worth taking notes on.

She asked for permission to talk to Wilbur and Phil about his diagnosis and possible medications and he said that he didn’t care either way. Her forehead furrowed at that; he knew that he was supposed to care. 

_Don’t you want to?_ the voice asked. 

_Stop being confusing and go back to being mean,_ he thought. 

“I don’t think that it’s a hallucination,” Thyme said when they talked about the voice for the first time. “I think that it’s you.”

“Me?”

“What it tells you, isn’t that just what you’re thinking about yourself?”

“Maybe. But I don’t want to listen to it and it still talks.”

“Sometimes thoughts are hard to ignore. You can’t control them.”

“So I’m stuck with it.”

“Do you agree with it?”

“I don’t always want to.”

“Then don’t. You can’t stop yourself from thinking those things but you don’t have to agree with them.”

It wasn’t a monumental piece of advice. It wasn’t even close to solving his problems. 

But the next time the voice said _Wilbur doesn’t even like you,_ he thought, _When we streamed together, I could always make Wil laugh. Always. He said I was like a brother._

And for a second, his head was quiet.

 _Maybe I can work with this,_ he thought. 

'ADHD,” Thyme said, voice drifting through the wall while Tommy waited for Wilbur and Phil to finish a meeting with her. The back of the chair dug into his spine and he tried not to listen. It wasn’t anything different than what she’d told him in their session that day. 

“... comorbidities in patients occur more often than you might think ... You can medicate both or try for one, I suggest that we start with some sort of stimulant for now...” 

They picked up a pill bottle from the pharmacy, orange with a white top that Phil retrieved from some hiding spot every morning like clockwork.

Tommy tried not to get his hopes up. 

“Maybe I should have started doing drugs earlier,” he murmured in disbelief. 

He’d eaten breakfast and Phil had handed him an oval of a white pill to swallow in between bites. 

Then he’d gone back upstairs to begin his ritual of doing absolutely nothing for copious amounts of time. He was staring at the ceilings — as usual, he’d almost mapped it out by now — when he realized that it was quiet but his head wasn’t buzzing.

He realized that the ceiling was okay to look at, but it wasn’t anchoring his eyes like it usually did. He thought, _I’m going to get up and go to the bathroom right now,_ and he stood up and did it. Just like that.

It wasn’t like there’d been anything stopping him before. Nothing physical, at least. 

He sat at the desk in his room and thought, _I’m going to write a letter to Tubbo._ It didn’t take him an hour to get up and find a pencil or longer to figure out how to start it. He just wrote, and his thoughts seemed to line up in neat rows as they waited to be put onto the paper — they’d never done that before.

He wrote it without stopping, without being forced to stop by the texture of the chair or the sound of the heating system kicking on. 

_Hi Tubbo,_ it read. _Phil said that they talked to you and that you know I’m okay (I don’t know if I’m better but I don’t think I’m worse). They said that I could have my phone back if I wanted it._

_I didn’t._

_I bet everyone on Twitter left because I wasn’t there anymore and no one else is funny._

_Actually maybe they stayed for you, you can be pretty funny sometimes. (Not as funny as me though!)_

_I hope that school is going okay. I think that I’ve probably failed all my classes by now._

_Anyways, you can write back if you want but you don’t have to._

_Love,_

_Tommy_

He asked Phil to mail it and the man smiled. “Sure.”

“Toms?” Wilbur said quietly, knocking on the door.

Tommy usually came down for breakfast on his own these days, but he felt terrible — nauseous and shaky at even the thought of eating. The blinds were shut and his room was dark, the only light coming through the seam of the doorframe.

“What?”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Can I come in?”

“If you want.”

The door opened quietly and he felt the bed shift as Wilbur plopped down on top of the blankets. 

“Have I told you how much I love you today?”

“No. I think you’re behind schedule,” Tommy said quietly. The amount of time that Phil and Wilbur put into saying things like that was excessive. “Be careful or you’ll say it too much and it won’t mean anything.”

“Not possible,” Wilbur replied. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Are you going to leave now?” 

“I think that I’ll stay and bother you if that’s alright,” Wilbur said, stealing one of Tommy’s blankets.

“Don’t take that! I’m cold,” Tommy protested weakly.

“Fine,” Wilbur grumbled, throwing it back over his face. 

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Kinda sick,” he mumbled, face mashed into his pillows. 

“Want me to make soup for you?”

“Last time you tried to cook, there was a kitchen fire.”

“Coincidence,” Wilbur chuckled. “It was an _unrelated_ kitchen fire.”

“I’m not hungry anyway,” Tommy said. Wilbur frowned slightly but didn’t comment on it. 

“Want a hug?”

Tommy’s heart was filled with a desperate want for someone to hold him, to make him feel safe, but asking for it made him feel guilty. They’d already done too much for him.

“Tommy?”

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from nodding. 

Wilbur, it turned out, was an excellent hugger. His arms were strong and he was warm and Tommy wanted to bury his face in the man’s sweater and never look up. 

“Shh,” Wilbur said comfortingly, carding fingers through his hair. “It’s okay.” That was when Tommy realized that he was crying, face wet with salty tears that had come out of nowhere. When was the last time he’d cried? He couldn’t remember. 

He sobbed until his tears dried up and he was exhausted, his eyes threatening to slip shut to the steady rhythm of Wilbur’s heartbeat. 

“Do you want me to stay?” Wilbur asked.

_More than anything else._

“You’ve probably got shit to do, it’s alright,” Tommy said.

“You’re more important than any of that.”

“Sure.” 

“I’ll keep saying it until you believe me.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Go to sleep, Toms. I’ll stay.”

He did sleep, curled against Wilbur and too tired to argue. When he woke up hours later, Wilbur was still there, his soft snores more endearing than annoying even if Tommy would make fun of them later. 

He’d stayed. Just like he said he would.

“Phil called to tell me that you experienced some nausea so we’re going to try new meds,” Thyme said at his next session.

“Will they work like the last ones?” Tommy asked. Feeling sick almost seemed worth the ability to concentrate and actually finish tasks. 

“They should. Most people try out a couple different prescriptions before they find one that works.”

“God,” he said, staring at his fingers, twisting a row of plastic links that always seemed to return to their starting point no matter which way he turned them. “I’m pretty fucked up, aren’t I?”

“I could pull out some statistics if you really want to know how many people are just like you—”

“I’m bad at math,” Tommy interrupted. 

“— but,” she continued, raising her eyebrows, “you’re not fucked up. You’re not broken. The medicine may help but it’s not meant to fix you because you don’t really need fixing. It’s like a tool for you to use.”

“A tool that I need in order to function.”

“Would you make fun of me for wearing glasses?”

“Hmm,” he hummed. He rather liked her glasses, with their round, sage-green rims. Much better than Techno’s taped-together pair that refused to die. “Maybe. Four eyes!” 

“Be like that,” she said, smiling. “But they’re a tool for me. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to write or drive or see at all.”

“That’s different,” he mumbled.

“Is it?”

“Lots of people need glasses.”

“Lots of people have prescriptions.”

“Can you really not see without your glasses?” It was obvious that he’d changed the subject but Thyme didn’t push him. 

“Nope.”

"Ha! At least I’m not blind like you!” he cried triumphantly.

“That’s the spirit.”

_Hey Tommy,_

_Of course I’m going to ~~wriet~~ write you but I will miss autocorect. _

_I miss you too. Twitter is empty without you screaming at everyone. (KSI said he hopes you feel better soon). I still think that I am funnier than you, maybe by just a little bit._

_Just tell your teachers that you’re ~~mafuos~~ famous. Then they won’t be allowed to fail you. _

_I hope that you feel better soon, maybe we can call sometime._

_I love you,_

_Tubbo_

Inside the envelope, there was a small, hand-drawn bee and a music disc on heavy paper. He smiled, going downstairs to rummage for tape so that he could put them on the wall by his desk. 

“You awake?” Phil said quietly from outside Tommy’s door. It was late enough that he knew he should have been asleep and he wanted to be but his brain wouldn’t quite cooperate. He’d left his desk lamp on because nothing was worse than lying with his eyes open in the quiet darkness. 

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Tech wants to talk to you. I think that he forgot about the timezones being different. Do you want him to call back later?.”

“It’s fine— I’m becoming an insomniac. Can I borrow your laptop?”

“I’ll bring it in,” Phil answered. “Maybe we should talk to Thyme about the sleep thing.”

“Maybe.”

Phil returned with his laptop and a pair of headphones. The weight of them reminded Tommy of streaming and for a second, he almost missed it. The chat and the rush and the glow of a screen. 

Then Techno’s voice filled his ears.

“Hello,” Techno said, the same intonation that Tommy had probably heard hundreds of times. The familiarity was comforting. 

“Hi,” he said, almost shy. He wondered what Techno thought about the fact that he wasn’t screaming or laughing maniacally — after all, that had been Tommyinnit’s job and now there was only Tommy. 

There were gaps in their conversation but Tommy didn’t think that it was awkward, though he could tell that Techno was trying to avoid the topic of Tommy’s breakdown and absence entirely. 

He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it anyway. He did that enough with Wilbur and Phil and Thyme, and he was sure they’d told Techno everything.

“Wanna see me kick some ass on Hypixel?” Techno asked, and it was like Tommy had a little Youtube video all to himself — not that it could have been monetized; Tech sweared liberally off-stream.

“You mean get your ass kicked?”

“You wish. It’s like they don’t even try anymore.”

“Next time I play, I’ll beat you for sure.

“I bet you will.

Slowly, their banter faded into Techno narrating and Tommy watching, laughing or talking occasionally but happy to just listen. It was nice, normal. He found himself smiling.

The laptop started to slide off his chest and he felt his eyes closing, Techno’s voice a comforting monotone that lulled him to sleep. 

When he woke up again, it was to a shrill scream which he answered with one of his own, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest.

“Sorry,” Techno coughed, clearing his throat. “Got jump-scared by a baby zombie.” Tommy grabbed the laptop and saw that it had been hours — the battery nearly dead — Techno now farming on the SMP. 

“I was asleep, you know,” he said. 

“I know. I called you all sorts of rude names to make sure.”

“Why didn’t you hang up?” Tommy asked. 

“I— I’m not good with feelings, Toms,” Techno answered after a pause. “I’m not good at talking about them or understandin’ them but you’re important to me. And if all I can do for you is stay on a Discord call, then I’m going to do it.”

“Thank you,” Tommy said, not sure if he could say anything else without crying.

“Anytime.”

They called more often after that.

There were days where he felt empty and couldn’t get out of bed. He had to switch medications again because the shadows under his eyes were too pronounced to ignore. 

There were days when he made Wilbur and Phil laugh, sitting next to him at the table or together on the couch, and he forgot about anything else, for a blissful second. 

There were good mornings and bad nights and any combination of the two. But he wasn’t alone. 

He started to learn how to smile again. 

“Rise and shine!” Phil said, shaking his shoulder softly. There wasn’t any light hitting the blinds and Phil was silhouetted by a dim hallway bulb. 

“The sun isn’t even awake yet, asshole,” he whined in protest, stretching his arms up and feeling his back pop.

“That’s the point,” Phil said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Grab a hoodie!”

“Where are we going?” he asked, dragging himself over to the dresser to grab clothes at random. 

“Breakfast picnic!” Wilbur yelled from the kitchen.

“It’s six in the fucking morning!” Tommy yelled back.

They piled into the car with a picnic basket — prepared by Phil, thankfully — and Tommy must have fallen asleep in the backseat because when he opened his eyes again, they were pulling into a gravelly parking lot. 

“Did you wear tennis shoes?” Wilbur asked, checking his parking before turning off the car.

“Yeah?”

The rocks crunched under their feet as they walked past the trailhead and started up the hill. Behind them, Phil trudged with the basket, wearing his bucket hat even though the horizon was only a dull, hazy purple. 

“You alright, old man?” Tommy yelled. 

“Do this old man a favor and come carry something!” Phil answered.

Tommy ignored him and walked faster. “Revenge for not letting me sleep in,” he muttered.

Wilbur only smiled. “It’ll be worth it,” he said. 

By the time they got to the top, Tommy’s legs and his lungs were burning and he struggled to maintain composure, making fun of Phil for standing with his hands on his knees while wanting to do the same. 

Below them, the city spread out like a picture. Everywhere he looked, people were waking up and going places, driving to work or back from the night shift, turning on lights in their kitchens. And as he watched, the first streak of orange ran across the horizon. 

The sun was rising. 

It painted the buildings and the streets and the grass around them in swirls of warm light, making everything look softer. Below them, the leaves of trees in the street fluttered softly in the wind, waving.

“Pinkza,” he heard Wilbur whisper to Phil, the two men saturated with color. 

It was just another sunrise. Any day that he woke up early enough, he could look out the window and see one. 

The clouds were beautiful — streaked as if they’d been painted with pastels— but they were just clouds. The trees and the grass were beautiful but they were everywhere, nothing special. An everyday occurrence was nothing to get choked up about. 

So why were his eyes watering?

It was because he realized that a month earlier, he could have seen something amazing, something awe-inspiring, a hundred sunrises like this, and he wouldn’t have smiled. He wouldn’t have cared. _Just another sunrise,_ the voice would have said. _Another day you have to live through._

 _Another day,_ he thought, the corner of his mouth twitching. _Tomorrow I’ll wake up and there’ll be another sunrise waiting for me. And the next day. And the day after that._

He couldn’t wait to see what they looked like. 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope that you're excited for all the sunrises in store for you <3 
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ghostbandaidsrel)
> 
> if you have the time, leave a comment! feedback makes my day (:


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